FOR 1371: Design and Behaviour - Economic Engineering of Firms and Markets

经济工程是设计现实世界的制度和机制，使个人激励和行为与潜在目标相一致的科学。机制之所以重要，是因为它们影响激励机制，而决策者对激励机制作出反应。他们并不总是以理性或自私的方式这样做，然而，行为往往以系统的方式做出反应。这是研究股的出发点，该股的目的是在健全的行为研究的基础上设计公司和市场的机制。标准经济学理论加深了我们对抽象环境中完全理性和狭隘自利的个体之间的经济互动的理解。然而，当行为变得“人性化”，环境变得“现实化”时，人们对经济结果的稳健性缺乏理解：在简化假设下运作良好的机制可能会在更相关的假设下失败。该研究股的目标是确定和调查行为的复杂性，是相关的更广泛的“现实世界”的背景下-特别是社会偏好-，并制定具体的情况下，可以被证明是强大的对这种行为的复杂性的机制。各项目之间存在着显著的相似性，参与研究人员之间的合作也产生了协同效应：首先，重点是社会行为在经济工程中的作用。第二，所有项目都遵循一种共同的方法，将理论、实验和实地研究的互补结果紧密联系起来。此外，研究人员共同构成了互补和跨学科专业知识和经验的平衡组合，这是处理现实世界复杂性所必需的。该研究股由五个项目组成，涉及广泛的主题，如经济认知，大型消费市场的信任以及公司内部和公司之间的激励计划的设计。

Economic engineering is the science of designing real-world institutions and mechanisms that align individual incentives and behaviour with the underlying goals. Mechanisms matter because they affect incentives, and decision makers respond to incentives. They do not always do so in a rational or selfish way, though; yet behaviour often responds in a systematic way. This is the starting point of the Research Unit, which aims at designing mechanisms in firms and markets based on sound behavioural research. Standard economic theory deepens our understanding of economic interaction of perfectly rational and narrowly self-interested individuals in abstract environments. There is, however, a lack of understanding about the robustness of economic results when behaviour becomes 'human' and the context becomes 'realistic': A mechanism that works fine under simplifying assumptions may fail under descriptively more relevant assumptions. The goal of the Research Unit is to identify and to investigate behavioural complexities that are relevant for a broader range of 'real-world' contexts - in particular social preferences -, and to develop mechanisms for specific contexts that can be proven to be robust against such behavioural complexities. There are significant similarities across projects as well as synergies from cooperation between the participating researchers: For one, the focus is on the role of social behaviours in economic engineering. Second, all projects follow a common methodological approach, tightly connecting complementary results from theory, experimental and field research. Also, together the researchers constitute the balanced mix of complementary and interdisciplinary expertise and experiences that is necessary when dealing with real-world complexities. The Research Unit is composed of five projects dealing with a broad range of topics like economic cognition, trust in large consumer markets and the design of incentive schemes within and between firms.